I invite you to listen to the voices of Anastasia and Mark. Their words and my photos will give you a first look into my journey down the LA River. These first two chapters, which are still in progress, have taken me deep into the lives of others. I’ve seen and learned so much. I give thanks to the people who have opened up and allowed me to witness their reality.

The LA River has been a source of life for people since the time of the Tongva, who built 45 villages near its shore. When the first Spaniards “discovered” the river, they gave it the name that would eventually be passed on to the city of Los Angeles. Following the flood of 1938, practically the entire river was cemented over, fenced up, and turned into a forgotten wasteland, unused by the public.

Now, eight decades later, a movement to turn the river back into a place where communities can celebrate nature, art, and outdoor activity has gained momentum. The plan to revitalize the river is being pushed by Eric Garcetti, the mayor of LA. The world famous architect, Frank Gehry, has started plans to give the Los Angeles River a makeover. The project may cost the city billions of dollars. But if it is successful, it will turn this desolate cement canal into an exciting green space that locals and tourists can enjoy for years to come. It intends to connect the communities of Los Angeles through bike paths, parks, and communal areas.

There is a heated debate about whether gentrification, which is already happening in areas along the river, will ruin LA or change it for the better. Will it “white-wash” the neighborhoods lining the river, stripping them of their culture and sense of community? Or, will it bring thousands of jobs and help to wipe out the violence, drugs, and gang activity that have come to define many of the neighborhoods lining the great vein of LA?

I’m going to walk the whole fifty-one miles. From Canoga Park, where the river begins, to Long Beach, where it empties into the sea, I will document neighborhoods like Compton, East LA, Frogtown and Studio City. The focus will not only be the river, but more importantly, the lives of people inhabiting the communities that surround it. The journey will celebrate the diversity of Los Angeles as well as explore themes of poverty, race, and social economic status in a time of change.

What is #RunaFlirts?

We've started a new project called #RunaFlirts. We're posting photos on our Instagram account @runa_photos. Each picture posted will be connected to the previous one in some way. They may be connected through color, subject matter, composition, or have some thematic thread that holds them together. We will connect unrelated photos to create a narrative that will take us on an unpredictable path.

How does it work?

Karla, Misha, Ivan and Raul are already posting photographs. Each new pic is connected to the previous one. We also want to see your photos. Yes, you are welcome to join us!

Do you want to flirt with Runa?

We want to feature your photographs on our instagram account, @runa_photos. Tag your photos with the hashtag #RunaFlirts and mention @runa_photos in the caption. We will be checking all the tagged photographs and we'll post the ones that best fit the narrative. The whole story will be changing daily, so we may use any picture anytime. It doesn't matter the date it was uploaded or tagged. Any photo could be a good candidate.

"You're gonna get mugged, kidnapped or killed!" - This what I was told by friends and relatives when I explained them that I wanted to document the border region between Ecuador and Colombia. What happens along the thin line that divides both countries is little known; everybody assumes it is nothing good.

My destination was Puerto Nuevo, a small village of around five hundred inhabitants, located on the banks of the San Miguel River, on the Ecuadorean side of the border. Colombians fleeing armed conflict in the south of their country founded it in 2001. The village is located in a hard to reach area, in an impoverished region forgotten by the governments of both countries.

I wanted to tell the story of people who were forced to flee from a conflict and live in oblivion. My strategy was to portray the banality of everyday life from a subjective point of view. These are images that do not show violence in a literal way but give the viewer the feeling that something is about to happen. These are images subject to interpretation and various readings, just like literary work. From the beginning it was clear that the project would be called “Al otro lado” (On the other side), since this is the way villagers here refer to their home, the other side of the river, Colombia.

I made three different trips to Puerto Nuevo and after the last visit I had about 6000 photographs. Editing down the work took a lot of time, effort, tears and sweat. More than a year later and with the help of Spanish editor Claudi Carreras, we managed to finish a tight edit that I believe tells a strong story. The book is divided in five chapters and each tackles a different aspect of the town: the village in daytime, the Escobar family (nothing to do with the famous Escobar), the children of the town, the Baldeón family and the town at night.

During my stay in Puerto Nuevo there were times I felt extremely bored because almost nothing happens during the day. For me, boredom was one of the most important creative engines I had there. I was so bored that I started taking pictures of objects found on the streets. I also asked people to show me their family albums and made pictures of the photos inside. During the editing process I decided to make facsimiles of these objects and include them as visual prologues to the chapters. Each prologue is deeply related to the theme of the following chapter.

After the editing stage, we started designing the book with the help of Brazilian designer Mariana Lara Resende. This process was really important since we wanted everything to make sense with the concept of the book: the pictures do not have white frames because we wanted the viewer to feel the pictures continue outside the boundaries of the book; the paper had to have a rough texture to resemble the concrete texture of the unfinished houses in Puerto Nuevo; the gray color had to do with the same issue; the bellyband had to resemble a plastic tablecloth that does not fit really well to the table and so on.

At the end I am really happy with the result and I believe this couldn’t be achieved without the help of Claudi Carreras, Mariana Lara Resende and the crew at Brazilian publishing house Editora Madalena, to whom I am very thankful.

If you would like to purchase the book you can find it in our Facebook store. If you are in Brazil you can find it in Livraria Madalena in Sao Paulo or Rio; in Argentina you can find it through Turma de Fotografía in Buenos Aires and in Ecuador you can get a copy at the Librería del Fondo, Librería Rayuela and Casa Mitómana.

Lastly, I leave you with some images of the exhibition at Quito's Contemporary Art Centre, curated by Anamaría Garzón, which will be open until August 28th.

This photographs are a tribute to the feminine. Following a path of encounters with women in all stages of life, it ends with an offering of fertility to the earth. In my family, women of all ages are abundant. They all influence and heal each other. In my profession, I've shared experiences and learned from many women. I have met the princess and the witch, the one with high heels, the bored one, the one with power, the one with broad hips, the one with the dirty mouth, and the techno-cumbia dancer. It is them whom I always seek for alliances, because they are the axis and strength of every place. Entering realities different than your own is not easy. Going into a place where you don’t understand social codes and can’t even speak the language can be dangerous. However, when there is trust between two women nothing is impossible. Women have opened doors for me. They have shared their lives and their secrets, and have become communication channels.

I give thanks for all my relationships with them and ask to always recognize the power of the feminine.

Karla and I just moved to California. We have always lived between two worlds. Between the North and the South. Between the Condor and the Eagle. Shifting from one to the other is never easy. Although the change can be exciting, the culture shock can give you a hard kick in the ass. After twelve years in Quito, Ecuador, this jump has been extremely difficult, more so than we imagined.

Just after we made the leap, the Photographic Museum of Humanity asked Runa to take over their Instagram feed for a week. Instead of posting photos from our archive, we decided to make an original and spontaneous series called “Interlude”. Working with Misha, who is still based in Quito, we playfully documented the moments of our everyday life. We used this project as a type of creative visual therapy. It was a time to breathe in the “in between”, and create for the sake of creating.

Outlandish, hot, sweet, salty, bitter, fiery, stinky, sexy, ruthless, incredible, beautiful, terrible - these are the adjectives that sum up my experience in Iquitos. I was meant to stay 5 days and ended up staying 10.

My bowels hurt after arriving at the producer’s market port: the true Mad Max of the Amazon rainforest. And during the same day my heart was rejoicing with the Iquiteños' attitude towards life: bright and colourful, like their houses and dresses.

As a foreigner, while walking through the streets of this city, it was impossible not to feel dizzy with so much visual stimuli. Sometimes the visual burden was such that I did not knew what to photograph next. I wanted to document everything but at the same time I felt powerless because of the impossibility to do it.

One of the things I was most impressed by was people’s attitude towards being photographed. Nobody was reluctant to stay in front of the camera and nobody told me “it is forbidden to take pictures here” - the most common negative affirmation of my trip. During my stay in this town I got access to various houses in this city and in Padre Cocha, a small village half an hour away from Iquitos.

This is a selection of pictures in chronological order from the third day in town. I spent the first half of the day in the outskirts of the Belen Market and the afternoon at the port of Nanay. In the evening I enjoyed a cold beer at the glorious El Refugio video pub with Enrique Pezo, a fellow photographer to whom I am very grateful for his advises and help. I’ve included a picture of him sitting in “great company” in the bar. It's the last picture of this lot. Now you know why I’ve called this place glorious. The interior was painted by Peruvian artist Ashuco.

Looking back at my work so far (the part that isn’t available to you yet), I realise that I will have a really hard time editing. I’m still not sure what end form will the project have. But I have a couple of ideas.

When I was in El Coca I asked a couple of people how to get to Iquitos from the Ecuadorian-Peruvian border on the Napo River. Nobody knew. Even at the tourist information desk. I was getting a bit worried until a boat driver told me there is one small boat from Pantoja, the Peruvian border town, to the village of Mazán, which is close to Iquitos on the Amazon River. This boat sets sail only on Mondays at 6am and the trip takes two days with a stop in Santa Clotilde to spend the night. He also told me there is another cargo ship on this stretch of the Napo River: "The trip on this ship takes around 3 days. It is cheaper than the small boat and they feed you really well. You sleep in a hammock and it is a beautiful adventure. However it has no schedule: You can be lucky and wait just a couple of days in Pantoja or get stranded a couple of weeks there". There is practically no formal commerce between Ecuador and Peru in this region. This is why transport means are scarce. After this talk, I decided to play it safe and aim at the small boat.

Pantoja is a really small village. It has no roads for cars or motorcycles, just sidewalks for people and bikes. It has a school, a police department, a migrations office and a public hostel. Although it is on the Napo River, running water is scarce and electricity comes for only 4 hours a day.

I arrived on a Sunday morning and was lucky enough to meet two teachers of the school. Tourism is almost nonexistent here, so they were really happy to meet foreigners. They offered to show me their village. They were both from Iquitos and gave me advice on the dos and don’ts while being there (including the famous "don’t walk with your cameras on your neck because you’re gonna get mugged”).

During our walk, I told them about my project and the trip. I also told them about the future Manta-Manaus commercial route and they didn’t believe me. “During summer, the Napo River is too low for large boats to sail the Napo. This is one of the reasons the cargo ship hasn’t arrived in two weeks. I don’t think this project makes sense” - they told me.

I stayed just one night at the only hostel in town and woke up at five o’clock to get to the boat. The trip was long and boring. There are almost no villages in this part of the river and therefore we didn’t meet many boats or people. Sadly, what we saw along the river were big chunks of land without trees: deforestation is a growing issue in the Peruvian Amazon.

We got to Santa Clotilde when the sun was setting. This town is a bit bigger than Pantoja: people move on bikes and motorcycles. Hungry as hell, I ran to the first small cafe I saw and ate rice with chicken (this was the 5th day in a row I ate rice with chicken, not because I love it but because it is the only thing people serve in the few cafes in the Amazon).

After dinner I felt really tired and didn’t shoot much. Just a naked guy having a bath in the river under the moonlight. After that I wen’t to a hostel.

“Why is it called Nuevo Rocafuerte and not just Rocafuerte?” - was my first question when I met Mr Tito, one of the founders of this village. “Well” - he said - “it used to be called Rocafuerte before the Peruvian invasion of 1941. See, Rocafuerte wasn’t located here, it used to be a couple of hours down the Napo River, in Peru. When the war started, the inhabitants of Rocafuerte fled to El Coca and the Peruvian army used the town as their military base. After the peace treaty of 1942, what was once known as Rocafuerte became Cabo Pantoja, a Peruvian village. A couple of years after the war, some of the former inhabitants of Rocafuerte decided to go as close as possible to where we used to live and founded a new village, which is this one, Nuevo Rocafuerte.”

I love border towns because of their vitality, commerce, noise, smells and mixes of culture, but Nuevo Rocafuerte is exactly the oposite. It is a small town of around 1400 inhabitants where not much goes on. Not many Peruvians cross the border to get here and not many Ecuadorians travel there. People assured me that it is not because they are still angry after the war, but because there is just not much to do.

I stayed there 3 days and I’m now posting pictures from the second. I was lucky enough to have met a couple of families that let me enter their homes and see how they live. They told me that Nuevo Rocafuerte used to be the parish’s cantonal head but after a referendum in 2008 the new head became Tiputini, a town 60 km to the north. They asked me to publish that they consider this referendum illegitimate and argue that the major has moved to Tiputini and never returned back. “Because he is afraid of us. We know what he did and how much he stole” - they added.

Everybody here knows about the Manta-Manaus commercial route project, but nobody is optimistic about it. “It could boost the economy in this region, but it seems the project is dead now” - said Mr Tito.

PS.There may be a bit of a fuzz about the picture of a boy with a collar and a swastika drown on it. I’d like to put of the fire before it starts by saying that I asked him about that and he didn’t know what it represents. He is not a neonazi nor practises hinduism. He just likes the graphics and hasn’t heard about WWII.

When I was researching about the Manta-Manaus route, I was getting suspicious on why there is so little information about the future international port of Providencia, on the Napo River. You would think that if this will be an important node in the route, it will be everywhere in the mass media, right? Well, let me tell you that sometimes Puerto Providencia is not even drawn on maps. The reason is simple: it is a really small town and when I say small, I mean only two families live here: the Machoas and the Grefas. Oh, and there is also the construction site of the future port which is currently stopped due to the lack of money.I had my serious doubts about this commercial route and being in this town was a confirmation about my pessimist view: The Napo River in this part is not deep enough and big boats won´t be able to access the port. In order to fix it a ton of money should be invested. And being China one of the major investors, it will be almost impossible with their current financial crisis.The Machoa family was reluctant to let me photograph them, they were afraid of some kind of retaliation from the government, but I did´t understand the exact reasons. On the other side, the Grefa family was happy to help when I mentioned I had a grant from the Culture Ministry for the project. They live next to the construction site and run a small restaurant and grocery store for the construction workers. The head of the workers also didn’t have anything against me taking pictures of the remaining workers and the construction site.I arrived by boat and stayed only about 36 hours in the village. During that time I ate and talked with the construction workers, saw their base camp, talked about the Manta-Manaos route with Marcelo Grefa, photographed his family and slept on a hammock in his house. Interesting fact: I only saw two women in the village (Marcelo’s wife and daughter).

Puerto Francisco de Orellana, commonly know as El Coca, is a small city at the confluence of the Coca and Napo Rivers in the Ecuadorian rainforest. There are many monuments to the discovery of the Amazon River by the Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana here. He led an expedition with more than a thousand indios to try to get to El Dorado, the legendary city of gold. The expedition went through the Napo and he “discovered” the Amazon River. El Dorado was never found and almost all of the expedition died. But he got the credit for the discovery of the biggest river in the world, taxes from the newly discovered tribes, and many monuments. He also had an Ecuadorian city named after him. That's not too bad. Unfortunately, the indios did not receive any monuments. Maybe that's why the city is better known for it's nickname, rather than it's official one.Most of the inhabitants came here to work in oil related businesses from all over the country, but since oil prices are getting lower everyday, work is also disappearing. Recently Petroecuador, the state owned Ecuadorian oil company, let go 1200 people and all of them worked in this city.However, people in this region keep on smiling and making it difficult to take “serious” pictures. When they see a gringo faced guy behind a camera (i.e. me) they start shouting “se te va a romper la cámara” (your camera will break), making the joke that they are too ugly to bephotographed. What they don't know is that for me, beauty is boring, plane and uninteresting.I am posting some pictures of the third day in town, which was the first I could really shoot throughout the day. It was raining the first two days. Walking through the city I came across a really colorful house which instantly hooked me. I couldn't resist and rang the bell. When Fausto Chicayo opened the door, I told him the truth: I thought his house was amazing and wanted to take some pictures of the decorations inside. He let me in. Another example of “the camera is a passport to other people's lives”, like Diane Arbus once said. Let's see if you can spot which pictures were taken there. (It's really easy).About the Manta-Manaus route? Some people have heard about it, but they were really pessimistic. They say it's too expensive and there is no money. “It´s better the government gives jobs to poor Ecuadorians and not money to rich Chinese investors”, somebody told me on the streets.

Next stop: Puerto Providencia (the future Ecuadorian port in the Amazon rainforest)

This is the first city (of many) in the Amazon rainforest of my trip. Tena is known to be the “cinnamon capital” of Ecuador. However, I did not see any cinnamon related businesses (or cinnamon in general).

Two rivers converge in this town: Tena and Pano. According to popular belief, Pano is the male river and it joins the female Tena. Together they form a bigger river (which is also called Tena). People here are quite welcoming and kind. When they see a camera they wave, smile and scream the commonly used “ponte guapo pa la foto” (make yourself handsome for the photo). And this is because they are used to tourists (so much easier to photograph here than in Latacunga, although it was a bit difficult to find serious, rather than smiley faces).

Again here are some shots of my first day in town, which I spent walking around the city. Tena is pretty small, so I think I covered almost all of it. The first night I watched a weird festival: a mix-up of traditional dances of Ecuador and Bolivia, with performing singers of reggaeton and pasillos (national Ecuadorian music). After that, and as usual in the rainforest, it rained cats and dogs.

“We call women here pitbulls: they are ugly and constantly mad” - this is what a friend of mine told me as soon as I arrived to the city. And he is mostly right, not because of the ugliness thing (which is purely subjective), but because people (especially women but not only) are constantly mad when seeing a camera. Latacunga has probably been one of the most difficult cities I've ever worked in! I was constantly yelled at for taking pictures in squares and people would approach me to ask me to give them money, otherwise they would “confiscate my cameras”. People in the highlands of Ecuador tend to be colder, but this was extreme.

Anyway, this was the first time in my trip I had a fixer, Jimmy. This facilitated things a bit. We met at his place next to the airport and then went to San Buenaventura, which is a barrio on the outskirts of the city. We entered the cemetery, met a man visiting her son's tomb and spoke a bit about documenting life (and death). After that we decided to clear our mindseating some “tortillas de palo” in the market nearby.

Latacunga is the biggest city closest to the Cotopaxi volcano, which has become very active the last couple of months. I saw many photographers on the outskirts of the city trying to capture this natural phenomena and told to myself “I don't want to be one of them”. However, I did take a picture of the eruption and it is in the selection above, let me know if you spotted it.

Again, I am showing some photos from the first whole day of shooting in town.

This city is known for being the “chaulafán” capital of the world (again, one of those self-made titles). Chaulafán is the Ecuadorian version of fried rice, which is mainly served in Chinese restaurants. When I arrived to Quevedo I felt like another grain of rice being fried in this city´s heat.

I checked in the Hotel Central. It has a fancy name, but that’s the only fancy thing about it. I stayed there because I loved the decadent interiors and the weird conversations with the cleaning lady, Rosa Rosado Rosales.

The town itself has grown disorderly throughout the years: commerce, as well as noise, is abundant on the street. While walking around it was impossible to be invisible, even worse with the cameras on my neck. At least five times a day someone warned me (two policemen and a security guard included) to be careful with my equipment because of thieves in the city. I did not really felt threatened until my last day of stay, when two men approached me and started joking about stealing my cameras. They told me, while laughing, that they did’t have a job and the cameras could support their families for a month. I laughed and played dumb. Then I asked if I could take a picture of them first. They were surprised by my reply and I think they enjoyed it but refused to be photographed.

The Manta-Manaus commercial route is supposed to pass next to this town, but here, nobody knew anything about that. And I asked a lot of people.

For this post, again, I chose to show you some of my favourite photographs made during the first day of stay in chronological order.

Recently I embarked on a trip to explore human life along the future commerce route Manta-Manaos. This will be a multi-mode route that is supposed to compete with the Panama Canal connecting the Pacific port of Manta in Ecuador with the Brazilian port of Manaos located on the Amazon River.

Some feasability research has been done, always studying the financial and commercial part of the project. I thought that this could be a good excuse to study human life along this way. And for this I will use my preferred tool: photography.

Until December 2015 I will be documenting human life in the following cities: Manta, Quevedo, Latacunga, Tena, Shushufindi, Puerto Providencia, Puerto Nuevo Rocafuerte, Iquitos, Leticia, Tabatinga, Manaos and perhaps some other small towns along the way. This will be a roadtrip of around 2.500 Km that will allow me to explore South America from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean and hopefully, towards the end of the journey, I will understand this region (my region) better.

In the next couple of weeks I will be posting my findings in this blog. But take into account, these are not end results, but the research process.

Welcome on board!

First stop: Manta

Manta is an Ecuadorian coastal city that hosts the second biggest port of the country. The port works almost exclusively for import, since there is no developed industry in the city that could fuel an export business. The city is also proud to be the "Tuna Capital of the World", a title well deserved since this sort of fish drives most of the economy here (although I wonder who gives a city such titles: UNESCO? UN? Selfproclaimed? If you know something, please let me know).

For this first post I will show some of the pictures I made on my first day in town (September 2nd, 2015). The images are in chronological order and there are already some interesting relationships between photographs.

This is the process, not the end result.

The Kawsay Ñampi project is one of the winners of the grant "Fondos Concursables" from the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture and Heritage.

I’ve been living in Ecuador for about nine years now. It’s been a wild ride with sky-high highs, rock-bottom lows and everything in between. I’ve spent a large chunk of my life on the Equator. During my time here, I’ve traveled throughout Ecuador and Latin America working on assignments and projects. I’ve been hopping from country to country, assignment to assignment, always on the go. And just when things started to slow, it was time to go back to California and visit family and friends. Home, in Ecuador, has been a place to rest, regroup, and prepare for the next journey. I had never really stopped to examine how wonderfully funky my home was, until I moved to Rumihuaico.

#Rumihuaico, #Tumbaco and the surrounding #communities

Rumihuaico is a barrio near the city of Tumbaco, and ever too close to Quito. It’s the kind of place where everyone says hello to their neighbour. Walking down the street, you are transported to a far-off time, where little old ladies dry seeds on their patios, men drive by on old rusty tractors, and kids play outside into the night. Just down the road is the city of Tumbaco.

Not too long ago, Tumbaco and the surrounding neighbourhoods were nothing more than vast farmland. In recent years, there has been a mass migration from countryside to cities. With this population shift, Quito has spilled over into the surrounding valleys. What once were agricultural fields, are now parking lots and shopping malls. Foreigners and wealthy Ecuadorians have begun buying large chunks of land and settling up in the hills. Quito’s international airport has been moved down to this valley, leaving Tumbaco smack in between all the incoming flights and Quito. This has heavily increased the traffic and has led to the construction of a super highway that will run through the area.

Despite the exponential growth and the rise of fast-food joints and global pop culture, parts of this area maintain the qualities of a small Ecuadorian pueblo. Tumbaco and the surrounding areas are a perfect example of the old vs. new, chicha vs. diet coke, or cockfights vs. movie theatres. It is a fusion of the old generation and the new generation, a chaotic mixture, which I am a part of. I plan to document my daily journey through this rapidly changing area, and I’m going to do it all with my phone.

#iphoneonly

Why use my phone? That’s a good question. If I’m investing my time and taking this project seriously, why not use a camera with some major megapixels? I’m taking a chance and this is an experiment. Less than a year ago, I had no idea what instagram was, and I would have laughed at the thought of using my phone for a project. So, why use a phone now?

1) I always have my phone. Whether I’m walking to the local store to buy a beer or driving through the car wash, it’s in my pocket. How many times have I seen a beautiful moment unfold before my eyes and thought, “Shit, my camera’s in the house”! That’s not a problem anymore.

2) It’s less intrusive. I already stand out here. I’m about two feet taller than everyone else. It doesn’t matter what I wear or if I learn the local slang…I’m still the “Gringo”. It’s a lot easier to shoot with a phone without being noticed, especially when you’re doing street photography.

3) It seems appropriate for this story. If this is a story about the old vs. the new, a personal story about my place in this neighborhood, it seems like an interesting idea to use an iPhone. That’s what this story is about, the shift. This includes rapidly changing technology and the digital revolution, which is happening all over the world, including in #Rumihuaico.

4) Mass Communication. This is an amazing opportunity. Because of my connection with National Geographic, I’ve been able to link people back to my instagram feed. I now have 37 thousand people receiving this story on their phones. @Natgeo has 2.4 million followers and @thephotosociety has 114 thousand. Never before have I had the opportunity to share my work and my ideas with so many people!

5) It’s live. People all around the world can watch this project as it develops and comment on it. That’s cool.

(There are plenty of reasons not use my phone for this project, but I’ll save that for another blog)

Warning: This post is written by a beginner professional photographer and many of the thoughts may be too subjective, inexperienced, inaccurate or even wrong. Reader discretion is advised.

This is probably the best epoch for photography: this craft has never been more democratic, the amount of (new) photographers is overwhelming, the quantity of photos produced everyday is astonishing and the quality is fairly good (not only because of faster cameras and lenses). So, what are the most important things to do while starting in the business of photography? You have to be good and get noticed.

I am not going to talk about the first point, I’d rather focus on the last one. In order to get noticed (by photo editors, curators, agencies, galleries) contacts in the field may be very handy, but the question remains, how to get them? As I see it, a powerful tool to start are the photography contests, festivals and fairs… BUT, there are just too many to choose from and nothing secures that if you enter a contest and then get chosen, you will have success and your photographic career will take off. In fact, the probabilities of being chosen in a contest AND successfully launching the career are pretty low and demand LOTS of work. But you lose nothing trying, right?

That is true, unless the contest has an entry fee and then you could lose both time and money… Nowadays there is an increasing market in photography contests and festivals, which is good in one hand. On the other, there are also lots of contests and festivals that exist only for business sake. So the dilemma for a cub photographer is whether to spend those last 35 Euros in our pocket on a thing that has lots of possibilities of not bringing any benefits, or investing that money in photographic materials or food (yeah, photographers also eat).

I am not sure if I want to create a big debate about this topic, but I want to illustrate recent experiences I’ve had in this field:One of the contests to which I applied, replied saying that they did not choose me due to the big amount of entries they had this year, but encouraged me to participate in their next events. They said that they broke the record of submissions and had around 5000 applications. If we multiply that amount by 35 Euros (for the first 5 images submitted and 3 more Euros for each additional) we reach to an amount of nearly 200 000 Euros (or perhaps more). Sure, the contest has to pay judges, organizers, has to buy prizes, print images and catalogues, etc. But I am reluctant to think this will cost that much, bearing in mind that the contest also has sponsors. Another contest told me (I’m pretty sure it was their robot secretary) that they were “impressed by my work” but did not choose me. As means of keeping me interested they offered a 10% discount for their next contest. A contest in which I was selected last year, wrote me asking if they may use one of the selected pictures in a slideshow this year in a gallery opening in New York where lots of curators and editors are supposed to attend. I was excited, but they told me that if I agree, I had to pay $60 for 4 seconds of exposure in a slideshow next to hundreds of other images… Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, this might be a pretty good business, and I agree with that.

The capitalized market has taught us one thing: if you don’t risk, you don’t get any benefits. So, to what extent should a photography enthusiast (cannot name it professional because he’s not earning any money from it) risk it’s often limited wealth? It is my opinion that before risking any money, the enthusiast should get as much information from the organizers, judges and previous events as possible. And this is why I am writing this post: to share with you my knowledge about trustworthy contests and for you to contribute if you know something that I don’t know (or to tell me if you think I’m paranoid).

I would recommend applying for every free contest. That is if you have the time to prepare your entry for each individual one. I think there are as many formats to apply as there are contests, so this may be a really tedious and time-consuming work. I would also recommend applying to every major contest like the World Press Photo, the POYi or the POY Latam (if you’re from this part of the world) or the Sony World Photography Awards. It is true that the chance of winning is small, but nothing is impossible as shown by some of my close friends and colleagues. And finally, I would like to recommend these contests (feel free to add other contests or festivals in the comments bellow or in our Facebook page):

This will be one of the most difficult posts, but it won’t be about politics.

The first time I heard the sirens, I was with my mom discussing the Israel-Palestine conflict in her room. At the beginning we did not understand anything. It was as if there was this big and loud ambulance and it wouldn’t pass by… And then we heard the BOOM. For me, it was one of the loudest and scariest noises I’ve ever heard, and not because of the noise itself, but because of the effect it produced in my mothers face: a panic effect i’ve never seen in her.

We went running out of the appartment, and on the stairs we found our neighbours already standing there with their faces also marked by surprise and fear. The imaginary “no-conflict-bubble” surrounding Tel Aviv was gone.

In the following days, life in the city continued: children went to school and adults to their jobs. But you could feel the tension and fear in the air, especially during the sirens and booms.

Yesterday, after the explosion of a bus due to a terrorist attack, I went for a walk through the city. The tension was higher than ever. People were always on their phones, whether reading the news or trying to reach for the loved ones.

I thought that this should be a good time to inspect local bomb shelters, just in case.

Gladly, a ceasefire was reached at the evening and life is getting back to normal. Yeah, there are still some jets and helicopters flying around the city. And yeah, I still get scared with any loud noise. But I hope it will pass and peace will last… although there won’t be a bubble anymore.

You will always be remembered as the jeep that took us to the end of the world… and back.

Nobody thought you’d make it. You climbed the Andes of Peru in search of the Condor Gods. You choked on the dust of the Altiplano, resuscitated by a helpful and knowledgeable Bolivian man. You swam through the fingers of the Napo River and crossed the driest desert in the world. You battled the endless wind of the Patagonian roads and triumphantly crossed the Straight of Magellan. There we sat in the Land of Fire, peering out of your fogged-up windows, watching snowflakes fall from the sky. Together we smiled. We were half way through the longest journey of our life.

When there were no hotels, we rested our sleepy heads below your red roof. If we needed a better vantage point, we climbed up on your back feeling your metal indent below our dirty shoes.

You where there for us. With all our belongings inside you and more strapped on top, you were our faithful companion. For that we are in debt to you.

And now we’ve traded you for power steering and automatic windows. We’ve traded you for cushy seats and a bump’n sound system. Sancho, you must forgive us.Believe us when we say, “Sancho, you will NOT be forgotten”.

“We photographers are changing the World. Be sure that whenever you grab a camera something interesting will happen”. That’s what I heard Russian photographer Aleksandr Belenkiy say at the end of a workshop. He couldn’t be more right.

It all started when I decided to do a story about Ecuadorian shamans but had no contacts whatsoever. So I followed Belenkiy’s advice. I grabbed my camera and travelled to Iluman without knowing what would happen. In this small town, next to the famous city of Otavalo, in the northern highlands of Ecuador, lives a population of about 7000. Around 300 of them belong to the local “Association of Yachacs” (Yachacs means healers in the indigenous language, Kichwa).

I arrived in Iluman and began to walk around, trying to find some Yachac that would let me photograph him. I was a bit lost and confused until Diego introduced himself and asked if I needed any help. That’s how he became my guide in this town and showed me where the most famous Yachacs lived.

The rest is history. I knocked on many doors but nobody would let me in. Some Yachacs told me that it was not possible because my presence would disturb their sacred rituals. Others just wanted my money. Finally I found Luz Maria Otavalo, a 60 year old indigenous Yachac, who agreed to let me photograph her. So I visited her during 8 months and this is what came out:

During the last blue moon in August, fifteen foot flames ate up our home. What is left of the hundred-year-old hacienda house named La Clementina, still sits on the edge of the Cañón del Chiche. At the bottom of it, the river with the same name snakes through muscular Andean mountains. Two months after the fire, I finally find the courage to write about it, my heart beating at the level of my throat.

I miss it. I probably always will.

The natives of America call it grandfather fire, because it’s wise and older than humanity itself. The grandfather filled up its lungs with air and decided to ignite with one blazing blow all of our physical memories. In twenty minutes, it all turned to dust. Years of collecting masks, cups, heart shaped rocks, postcards, spears, sea shells, journals, drawings, movies, magnets, poison darts, feathers, ponchos, blow guns, photo books, coins, skulls, dead insects, saints, devils, photos… I guess we liked collecting. All of a sudden, you become clean of everything. You feel like you were given a blank canvas, like a new born baby. And you feel sad and glad.

You would think the worse part about the fire was losing your “stuff.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t. There was deeper damage that went beyond what is replaceable with a trip to the mall. It started creeping on us slowly. We ignored it and went on with life. We found a new home, bought new clothes and logged into our facebook accounts. But it just wasn’t the same. We were pissed and depressed. To the point of wanting to scream, escape, break up, or sleep… just sleep. I lost a lot of my archive.. so I didn’t feel like shooting.. ever. We were living inside a dark, burnt-down dimension. The foundations of our relationship had been shaken. And we didn’t feel like asking for help, we just mourned in silence.

Recently, I went to La Clementina to visit my ex neighbors who have become like family to us. The house was clean of all our stuff, no debris, just house again. I walked through all the familiar rooms trying to find our smell. It wasn’t there anymore. Just cold empty rooms. There was a huge hole were our bed had been. The wind sang to me of old times that were no more. As the night fell, we built our own fire in the garden and sat under the avatar-looking tree. I looked across the garden at the dark and silent house. Through the broken windows you could see the ghosts of all times sliding from one room to another. I decided I didn’t want to live inside the burnt house with them anymore. I asked the moon for clarity.

I feel like I can finally move forward. Our new home was named after a grandmother, La Mama Grande. Its small and cozy and reminds me of a womb. Its a good place to heal and with it new neighbors have come and the bonds are getting strong. Our cats are finally home with us again (they went wild and almost left us for the canyon) and they seem peacefully content in their space. Today we leave to shoot a story we have been working on for some time. It feels good. A day at a time as they say. Good thing your house only burns down once in a blue moon.